Traditionally, garment hangers have been made from two pieces, i.e. a metal hook member of generally circular cross-section and a normally wooden or plastic hanger body. In order to assist a potential purchaser in assessing the suitability of goods on offer in a store, an information marker is often attached to the garment hanger. Such information markers may typically display information relating to the size or type of garment hung on the hanger.
For traditional garment hangers, it is known to use information markers which are provided with a through hole to allow the markers to be slipped over the free end of the hook member of the garment hanger. While such an arrangement ensures that the information marker cannot be inadvertently dislodged from the garment hanger, one disadvantage associated with such markers is that the garment hanger has to be lifted from a hanging rail when it is desired to add or remove a marker.
Accordingly, information markers have been developed which can be clipped to a traditional garment hanger without the need to lift the garment hanger from its hanging rail. Typical of such information markers are those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,898,754 and 4,679,340. The type of marker disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,679,340 is particularly advantageous due to its symmetry about a horizontal plane, thereby avoiding the need to orient the marker in the apparatus which prints indicia onto the information marker.
In recent years, in order to rationalize the production process, there has been a move towards plastic one-piece hangers, i.e. the hanger body and hook member are integrally molded in a plastics material. To impart sufficient strength to the hook member, its cross-section can no longer be circular, but is instead substantially I-shaped. This implies that it is no longer possible to use the type of marker as disclosed in the above-mentioned U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,898,754 or 4,679,340 with such one-piece hangers.
A number of one-piece plastic hangers is known, which hangers are provided with a member or portion to which an indicia carrying tab can be mounted. Various such hanger and tab arrangements are described in, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,115,940, 5,096,101 and 5,199,608. Common to all these arrangements is that the indicia carrying tabs are relatively small and any text thereon must be printed vertically. Thus, legibility of the information carried on the tabs is poor. Furthermore, consumers are used to seeing the previous types of product information markers and there is a natural reluctance to accept change. In addition, many retailers have existing stocks of cylindrical information markers of the type according to the above-mentioned U.S. Pat. No. 4,679,340 which are unusable on existing one-piece hangers.